These 22 Conservatives Just Declared ‘War’ On Donald Trump On Front Page Of Popular Magazine

A host of conservatives are trying to derail the campaign of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump through a National Review cover story that denounces Trump. The article questioned his knowledge of key issues, criticized several major Trump policies, and said Trump is not a candidate who embodies bedrock conservative principles.

Trump, who in September feuded with National Review Editor Rich Lowry, calling him a “crude pundit” after comments Lowry made about Trump and Carly Fiorina in a GOP debate, fired back against the piece via Twitter.

National Review is a failing publication that has lost it’s way. It’s circulation is way down w its influence being at an all time low. Sad!

The article, for which the Republican National Committee disinvited the National Review from participation in the Feb. 26 GOP presidential debate, said Trump is “not deserving of conservative support in the caucuses and primaries.”

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“Trump is a philosophically unmoored political opportunist who would trash the broad conservative ideological consensus within the GOP in favor of a free-floating populism with strong-man overtones,” the National Review wrote in a piece bylined “The Editors.”

“Trump’s political opinions have wobbled all over the lot. The real-estate mogul and reality-TV star has supported abortion, gun control, single-payer health care à la Canada, and punitive taxes on the wealthy,” the article said.

“If Trump were to become the president, the Republican nominee, or even a failed candidate with strong conservative support, what would that say about conservatives? The movement that ground down the Soviet Union and took the shine, at least temporarily, off socialism would have fallen in behind a huckster,” the article read.

The article includes an in-depth castigation of Trump’s immigration proposals.

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“Trump nevertheless offers a valuable warning for the Republican party. If responsible men irresponsibly ignore an issue as important as immigration, it will be taken up by the reckless. If they cannot explain their Beltway maneuvers — worse, if their maneuvering is indefensible — they will be rejected by their own voters,” the article read.

“Donald Trump is a menace to American conservatism who would take the work of generations and trample it underfoot in behalf of a populism as heedless and crude as the Donald himself,” it concluded.